


toi, moi, elle, et lui

by bucketofrice, gracesvirtue, KingdomLights, ladyfriday, Miss_Six, Nats_North_by_North, OnlySkyAboveMe, PinkGerberDaisies



Category: Figure Skating RPF, Olympics RPF
Genre: 5+1 Things, F/M, More tags to be added, a lil bit of crackship for your weekend reading, split up by chapter, there's a prologue and an epilogue too, this is a collaborative effort
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-08-11
Updated: 2018-11-22
Packaged: 2019-06-26 00:33:56
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 13,653
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15652131
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bucketofrice/pseuds/bucketofrice, https://archiveofourown.org/users/gracesvirtue/pseuds/gracesvirtue, https://archiveofourown.org/users/KingdomLights/pseuds/KingdomLights, https://archiveofourown.org/users/ladyfriday/pseuds/ladyfriday, https://archiveofourown.org/users/Miss_Six/pseuds/Miss_Six, https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nats_North_by_North/pseuds/Nats_North_by_North, https://archiveofourown.org/users/OnlySkyAboveMe/pseuds/OnlySkyAboveMe, https://archiveofourown.org/users/PinkGerberDaisies/pseuds/PinkGerberDaisies
Summary: "When the loneliness creeps in unbidden,when the pressure of the world is enough to make you both splinter,who can blame you for finding comfort?"orFive times Andrew was there for Tessa when Scott wasn't, and the one time he didn't need to be.





	1. all the wrong turns, the stumbles and falls brought me here

**Author's Note:**

> Hello! There is a serious dearth of Tessa + Andrew fic on this site, and a few of us are seeking out to remedy this. 
> 
> Don't get scared and run, Tessa and Scott are still endgame here! We're just dealing with the middle bits.
> 
> Every chapter has its own author, and we'll make sure to denote who wrote it in the notes. 
> 
> Other than that, we hope you like our little crackship escapade, enjoy!
> 
> (Summary lyrics are "Who Can Blame You" by Alison Krauss and Union Station)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The prologue is brought to you by [bucketofrice](https://archiveofourown.org/users/bucketofrice/), chapter title is "The Luckiest" by Ben Folds.

**_the prologue; or how it all began_ **

**_2018_ **

It’s funny, she thinks — as she’s lying in bed, Scott’s arms wrapped around her, his breathing deep and even — how it all started.

It was innocent enough, really, just two kids who got to know each other through a sport they both loved, two kids who understood what pressures the other person was under. Two kids who were there for each other when nobody else could be, who held each other up, who didn’t ask questions most of the time, or other times, asked just the right ones.

Two kids who gave each other exactly what they needed.

Nothing more, nothing less.

She thinks about this as she burrows herself further into the juncture of Scott’s neck and shoulder, one of her favourite places to be in the world. It’s odd, since she hasn’t given the whole thing much thought in the past few months, has pushed it to the back of her mind and tied it up with a neat little bow.

Until now.

It’s probably because she’s dancing with him again, in a little number for Stars on Ice. It’s an interlude, really, barely the length of a full song, and yet…

It’s her, and Kaitlyn and Andrew, and she thinks it’s kind of funny that they’re back in that old, familiar constellation they used to be in. This time, the public is watching, but she’s fairly certain nobody suspects there’s any sort of deeper meaning behind what’s happening on the ice.

For two minutes, she’s back in his arms.

But he leaves the ice with Kaitlyn, and she goes out to find Scott. She and Andrew have both known all along that this was the only way it could all end, the two of them returned to their partners, but the journey they took to get there was entwined, in more ways than one.

It all started in the summer of 2001, at the Lake Placid Ice Dance International, to the tempo of the Ten-Fox. She doesn’t remember much from that competition, 17 years later.

What she does remember, clear as day, is her and Scott on the podium, Alexandra and Andrew next to them with the gold, and Meryl and Charlie on the other side.

She remembers how when she glanced to her right she could only see Andrew's torso. Remembers how much his partner laughed when the photographers had to keep asking him to bend down lower so they'd all fit in the shot.

She also remembers the way he had smiled at her in such a warm and reassuring way when she was standing at the boards, fiddling with her guards nervously. How he’d been so kind, and funny, and able to make her laugh and take a bit of the stress of the competition away.

 

**_2001_ **

The first thing Tessa Virtue notices about Andrew Poje is that he’s tall. Like, _really_ tall. He’s only half a year older than Scott, but he has to be at least two heads taller, and honestly, she’s really impressed.

When she whispers that in Scott’s ear as they skate around the rink during practice, she can practically feel him stiffen at her side. She and Scott are one of the smallest teams in terms of size, and they know it.

Scott takes the reminder of this fact harder than she does, usually, because he’s two years older but doesn’t look it at all. And besides, she thinks, he’s a _boy_ , and boys do stupid things like compare heights and muscles and all the things that she and the other girls laugh about behind their backs.

Scott’s brow furrows in that specific way it does when he’s about to get so mad about something that he shuts down a little (or a lot), and they can’t have that happen right now, not before a competition, so she doesn’t dare bring it up for the rest of the day.

Instead, she squeezes his hand and they continue their laps in silence, occasionally glancing toward Suzanne, who’s standing at the boards and looking over at them encouragingly.

Apparently (from what she’s been able to overhear Suzanne and Paul talking about when they think she’s not listening) their coaches think they’re going to achieve something big one day, that they have potential and are promising and that they’ll have to get into the judges’ good graces.

Apparently, she and Scott are _destined_.

What for, she doesn’t quite know.

Practice continues in silence, save for the occasional keyword – _knees, together, breathe_ – that Suzanne has expertly drilled into them. She’s always been one to emphasize communication, and respect and collaboration between them, and Tessa knows it’s important to help them win.

On the ice, she and Scott are expert communicators. Off the ice … well, off the ice they’re still 12 and 13, goofing off but also getting on each other’s nerves on occasion.

Practice passes, and so do the compulsory and original dances, and Tessa thinks they’re doing pretty well, all things considered. It’s early in the season, and their programs aren’t fully developed yet.

And … although Scott will hate to hear this, they _are_ one of the smallest teams here.

Especially compared to Nino/Poje. (Or Alex and Andrew, if she’s being casual. But Tessa kind of likes how official everything sounds in ice dance.)

That night, all the skaters go back to their hotel rooms, and everyone knows it’s going to end up being one giant slumber party.

At least among Team Canada.

Skating competitions are usually like this. Someone raids a vending machine (under strict instructions not to let the coaches catch them lest they all receive a stern talking-to) for chips and chocolate and soda, and then they pile into someone’s room to eat their spoils and play silly games and watch crappy television.

The room of choice for that night happens to be one two junior boys are sharing, since a lot of the others are too young and still staying with their parents.

Tessa follows Scott inside, carefully walking a half-step behind him, effectively hiding behind his shoulder.

She doesn’t like crowds much, and truth be told some of the older and bigger skaters intimidate her. Scott is a little bit like a human shield to her.

They get settled on the floor in a corner by the bed – there are more kids than pieces of furniture and Tessa thinks absentmindedly that there has to be some sort of rule against this somewhere – and pretty soon, chips and candy get passed around and the room erupts into conversation.

Scott is in the thick of it immediately – he’s the _outgoing Moir boy_ , after all – laughing and joking and being a general goof. It’s typical, she thinks, that he’s off being a ham as she’s sitting quietly in her corner, a little overwhelmed by it all.

She expects to pass the evening as she always does, listening and plastering on a smile when someone looks in her direction, but otherwise keeping her nose in the book she brought to read. She really likes the _Harry Potter_ book that came out recently, and secretly wishes she could be Hermione Granger and get her very own letter to Hogwarts.

_(Much later in life, she’ll force Scott to take the sorting hat quiz with her. He’ll, predictably, be the stereotypical Gryffindor, no surprises there. She’ll be temporarily angry at her own Slytherin placement until Scott tells her they’ll do what no one’s done in aeons and bring unity to Hogwarts, ending the red and green feud once and for all._

_She’ll laugh at his antics, let him pull her close and press a kiss to the top of her head, and slowly begin to accept her inner cunning side.)_

For now, she’s stuck with the paperback copy of _the Philosopher’s Stone_ , which she’s re-reading for the third time. She’s getting right to the good part – where Harry and Ron and Hermione find the three-headed dog – when she feels someone nudge her shoulder.

It’s Andrew.

She has to crane her neck to see him properly, seeing that he’s over a full head taller than she is.

“You okay, Tessa?” he asks, giving her a warm smile.

She nods, quickly, and smiles, hoping it won’t betray the fact that she’d really rather be anywhere other than a crowded, loud hotel room in New York state. But Andrew seems to get it.

“Tessa and I are gonna go grab some more soda and ice,” he announces to no one in particular, and gets up from the floor, looking over at Tessa and wordlessly telling her to join him.

She puts the bookmark in her book and clutches it to her chest as she gets up and follows Andrew out of the room. Out of the corner of her eye, she spots Scott, looking confused, but she just shoots him a smile. _I’m okay, stay and have fun._

Andrew closes the door behind him and they walk down the hall. Tessa’s confused when he walks straight past the little alcove that houses the ice and vending machines.

She stops to let him know he’s overshot, but he turns around and shakes his head.

“We’re not actually getting soda and ice, Tessa. You didn’t exactly look comfortable back there. I thought we could take a walk and get away from the crowd for a bit.”

_Oh._

She nods, looking down at her shoes and the carpet, thinking the odd mustard-coloured pattern is the most interesting thing in the whole world.

“Tessa,” Andrew says, and she looks up again to meet his gaze. “Crowds aren’t really my thing either, you know. I may have asked you to come with me for purely selfish reasons.”

He gives her a goofy grin and she can’t help but giggle a little. She knows how he feels, knows all too well what it’s like to drown in a sea of people, retreating into yourself just to stay afloat.

They make their way down the hall in companionable silence, and Tessa walks next to Andrew, not a half-step behind. They must paint a funny picture, she thinks, the height difference so blatantly obvious, but their brown hair might make them look like siblings to the outside observer.

Though, and she’s not quite sure why her mind goes there, she kind of doesn’t want to be thought of as Andrew’s sibling.

She pushes the thought to the back of her mind and concentrates on the carpet runner once again, on the intertwining roses covering the ugly mustard background.

When they reach the end of the hall, Andrew points to a small alcove with a window seat and tilts his head. “Wanna sit for a bit?” he asks, and Tessa nods.

She tucks herself into the corner of the seat and looks out at the parking lot below them. It’s not much of a view, but the moon is pretty at this time of night, casting a cool glow in through the tacky, gauzy curtains the hotel has fastened there.

Andrew, whose long legs make sitting much more difficult, leans with his back against the window instead, looking out into the long hallway.

“Are you nervous for tomorrow?” he asks, glancing over at Tessa.

“Hmm…” She picks at a loose thread on a cushion and loses herself in her thoughts for a while.

Her mind goes to Scott, and the frustration he’s been feeling lately because of his size and the twenty people who’ve called him _stone hands_ recently.

She’s insecure herself, because Scott’s objectively the better skater than she is. She’s heard whispers, around the arena and at competitions, that Scott is a _once-in-a-generation_ talent on the ice, and she’s determined to work twice as hard just so she can try to come close to his edgework and technical skills.

_(Years later, she’ll learn he felt the exact same way about her dancing and movement, and she’ll smile and tuck herself further into his side as they skate lazy laps around the rink.)_

She doesn’t particularly feel like sharing any of this with Andrew, though she’s tempted. But he _is_ the competition, and Tessa Virtue is nothing if not competitive.

“A little,” is all she says, because she’s not a liar.

He considers her, studying her features like she’s some kind of riddle he can’t quite crack.

“Me too,” he finally says, twiddling his thumbs. “But I think that’s normal, eh?”

She nods, feeling oddly small in the long hallway.

“You’re a really talented skater, Tessa.” Andrew looks over at her and places his hand on her knee. “You’re gonna do great tomorrow.” It’s almost like he knew exactly what she needed to hear in that moment, and she smiles.

“You too.”

When they’re on the podium the next day, Andrew and Alexandra next to them with the gold, she catches herself looking up at Andrew, sharing a knowing smile.


	2. maybe if i tell myself enough

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The first chapter is brought to you by [PinkGerberDaisies](https://archiveofourown.org/users/PinkGerberDaisies/), chapter title is "Over You" by Ingrid Michaelson.

_**Canton, Michigan** _

_**October, 2007** _

  

Canton parties are all the same. Too much alcohol and not enough food. Too many people and not enough who she actually wants to talk to. Too much watching Scott chatting up other girls and not enough of him chatting with her.

Most of them will be leaving to compete at Skate Canada in Quebec City tomorrow, so they’re having a pseudo-Halloween party tonight instead. Nobody put much effort into dressing up, but the intent is clear in a few clothing items here and there. Tessa went with a basic all black ensemble and some cat ears and Scott wore a Batman t-shirt. Simple. Easy. Everything they should be but aren’t.

Scott disappears as soon as they arrive with a light touch on her back in farewell – heading over to talk to Charlie across the room and leaving Tessa to fend for herself. She knows he doesn’t see it this way, thinks she has just as much fun as he does because that’s what she tells him, but she still wishes he would stay by her side for a bit longer.

Tessa feels like she’s been doing a lot of wishing lately.

"Tessa!” One of the older skaters calls out, staggering across the room with a red cup held high in the air as she maneuvers around the crowd. “You made it!”

“Hi Amber.” Tessa greets the other girl with a small smile that she doesn’t feel.

“Did you get a funky monkey? Everyone poured all the alcohol they brought into the bowl and that’s what’s in the cups. It’s definitely not a treat, but it does the trick!”

She laughs at her own joke as she leads Tessa into the kitchen and watches as Tessa fills up one of the cups before holding her own out so that they can knock them together and yell, “Cheers!”

Tessa lifts her cup to her lips, the questionable murky brown liquid burning as it makes its way down her throat and into her stomach, but the pain is a welcome respite from the aching cracks in her heart and the constant fire in her shins. The terrible secret that she keeps from everyone around her that could do so much damage if revealed, but not nearly as much damage as the other secret that she’s been keeping.

The front door opens and a familiar dark, floppy-haired giant steps through. He’s greeting by a rousing chorus of “Poje!” that Tessa feels bounce around her head and in her heart. Andrew being here means having someone for her to talk to. He doesn’t make the drive out from Waterloo very often, but when he does it always guarantees a happier evening for Tessa.

She makes her way over to greet him and is immediately enveloped in a sturdy hug. His cheap cologne and faint musk from being at the rink all day permeates his clothes, but Tessa just snuggles in closer.

“Hey, Tess! Long time no see!”

“Hey Andrew.” Her reply is slightly muffled by his chest – her arms holding on a little longer than normal. But he doesn’t seem to mind, merely tightens his hold in return and plants a kiss on top of her head.

“Everything alright?” The concern in his voice is so genuine and she feels another crack run across the cement dam she’s carefully built around her heart. Tessa knows that if she asked he would ditch the party and let her spill out all of her emotions onto him. That’s the benefit of being friends for so many years in such a high-intensity sport. It breeds a kind of closeness that can’t be mimicked in the outside world. Sometimes that’s good (read: Scott), and sometimes that’s bad (read: also Scott).

“Everything’s fine.” She replies with a forced air of cheerfulness before taking another big gulp of her drink. She’s not a big person, whatever Marina might say, and she doesn’t drink very often, so the alcohol is already beginning to infiltrate her system. It makes her head feel heavy and the lights glow brighter. Makes her sigh and release some of the constant Scott-sized weight she carries around all day. (Ironic, considering he’s the one that does all the lifting).

They play beer pong together and she cheers Andrew on in an intense arm-wrestling match (he wins) and she mostly succeeds in ignoring Scott, who filters in and out of view as the night progresses.

An impromptu dancefloor gets created in the living room as a few kids shove furniture up against the walls and out of the way and turn on some Top 40 playlist. Before she can blink she finds Andrew’s hand in hers and he’s tugging her towards the crowd.

“Come dance with me. It’ll make you feel better.” He gives her his easy smile – innocent, kind, uncomplicated – and Tessa follows him willingly. The liquor flows through her body making her limbs loose and her morals looser as she grinds back against him. His hands at her hips, her ass grazing his crotch every once in a while. It’s all harmless flirtation that they both know doesn’t mean anything.

She turns around and wraps her arms around his neck as they continue to move, but then she makes the mistake of looking over his shoulder, and there’s Scott directly in view. She watches as he wraps his arms around someone who isn’t his girlfriend, and who isn’t her, to help the girl throw ping pong balls into the cups across the table. His hips pressed firmly into her ass in a way that definitely _isn’t_ harmless flirtation.

It lights a fury in her – sudden and hot and licking at her skin. Like a grass fire spreading out of control on a hillside.

She’d dyed her hair red, only for him to say he preferred brunettes. They were asked about their chemistry and if they were a couple and for one bright, fleeting moment Scott had said, “I wish!” only to turn around and claim that he was joking and that he saw her as his younger, but more mature sister. She’d thought they’d been moving towards something with how passionate he was during Assassination Tango all last season, with the way he would stare at her lips in their closing position for Valse Triste, but then he’d turned around and started dating Jessica.

Tessa’s struck by the sudden image of her face on a yo-yo. Tethered to Scott to be drawn in close or flung away at his whim.

The combination of anger, pain, and jealousy – stirred together by the alcohol like a potent cocktail – leaves her feeling lightheaded and nauseous.

She steps back from Andrew – stumbles, more like - and he catches her quickly before she can get shoved around too much by the throbbing mass behind her. “Whoa, Tess, are you okay?”

“No. I don’t feel very good. Can you take me home?”

It’s probably not very smart, but he’s only had one cup to drink and he’s much bigger than her, so she figures it’s probably okay if he drives her the ten blocks it’ll take to get to her apartment. It’s definitely a better alternative to walking in the frigid October night air.

"Absolutely. Do you want me to let Scott know?”

“No. He’s occupied.”

 

 

“Listen, Tess.” Andrew begins once they’re parked in front of her building. She’s been trying to work up the energy to open the car door. The rage she felt at the party had distilled into self-pity on the drive home and she feels like collapsing on her bed and having a good cry once she can find the energy to move. “I know I’m not Scott, and we don’t get to see each other very often, but I can tell that something’s upsetting you and I want you to know that you can talk to me about it.”

She turns to look at him at the sound of his quiet voice. His dark eyes glowing like burnt amber in the light from the street lamps.

“I think I’m in love with Scott.” The words are out of her mouth before she can stop them, but once said she doesn’t regret it. She’s been carrying them around with her like millstones for so long, just hearing the words out loud provides a modicum of relief.

“Yeah, I kind of thought so.” He smiles gently and pats her knee. “Have you told him?”

“Absolutely not.”

“Maybe you should.” Andrew suggests, but Tessa knows. _He’s not ready_. Scott’s barely twenty years old and finally leaving puberty behind and beginning to look like a man. He’s too caught up in the thrill of chasing girls, of his lower voice, of being an independent adult. He’s already tied to her in so many ways, he’s not ready to be tied to her in this one. Even if he did feel the same, which he decidedly doesn’t.

“It’s not just that.” Tessa says tentatively, sidestepping Andrew’s comment. “It’s my legs.”

And then the dam breaks in earnest. She tells him about the pain that started this summer, the way her shins burn – first only on the ice, but now spreading to off it as well. The way she’s beginning to worry that they won’t hold her like she needs them too. That they won’t get her to the Olympics. That it will be her fault if they lose their dream.

Without even noticing she finds their seatbelts undone and Andrew’s arms wrapped around her – holding her together as she breaks.

It takes a little while – longer than it would if she weren’t slightly drunk – but she eventually calms down. The tears stop falling and the shudders slip away. Leaving her feeling exhausted. Physically. Mentally. Emotionally.

“Have you told anyone, Tess?”

She shakes her head, face buried against his chest – probably smearing make-up everywhere.

“You should. You should tell your mom.”

“I’ll think about it.”

He releases his hold on her and she impulsively kisses his cheek before slipping out of the car and into the cold. She knows he’s right. Knows that unlike other secrets, she can’t keep this one forever. Eventually Scott will notice – for all his obtuseness when it comes to her _feelings_ , he knows her body like the back of his hand. Any wince, any flinch, and he’ll want to know the problem immediately. She needs a plan in place before that. She needs to tell her mom, see a doctor, and get a diagnosis and treatment plan in place before Scott suspects anything.

But the problem is, telling her mom makes it real, and if it’s real she might just lose the most important thing in her life.

 

* * *

 

_**Skate Canada International** _

_**November 1-4, 2007** _

 

She manages to keep it together throughout Dark Eyes. Scott wraps his arms around her in the opening position, face tucked close into the side of her neck. It’s all choreographed and something they’ve done a million times, but the sensations never change - the air as he exhales sends tingles across her skin, the warmth of his hands seeps into her body, and the anticipation of the performance sends her blood racing.

She’s eighteen. Hardly a child anymore, however young the two of them might look, and Tessa would be lying if she said Scott having his arms around her like this doesn’t feature in quite a few of her fantasies.

But the competition comes first. It always does. And she wipes her mind quickly of anything other than deep edges, twizzles, and lifts.

 

They sit in the kiss & cry after, holding hands and waiting for their scores. Together. Always, always together. Tessa figures if she ever sat down and calculated her life out in days, hours, minutes – Scott would be there almost every second.

When it’s revealed that they’ve maintained their lead from the Compulsory Dance, there’s individual hugs from Marina and from Scott, and one big group hug in celebration – although Marina reminds them like a knee-jerk reaction to any sign of joy that there’s still work to do tomorrow.

 

“Great job, T! You were amazing out there.” Scott kisses her on the cheek, an action he’s taken to doing more and more often lately, and hugs her again. This time away from the cameras. Actions meant just for her. For them.

It’s over far too soon.

“I’ll see you tomorrow at practice before the Free, eh? I’m gonna go find Jess.”

She knows what that means. Knew it the minute she saw _Dube & Davison _listed as one of the Pairs teams at the competition. She can see it in the way he walks a little too fast and with an extra spring in his step. He’s got adrenaline to work off before tomorrow’s Free Dance, and who better to do it with than his girlfriend?

She trudges off to the locker room, taking her time getting changed. Her parents will arrive tomorrow morning, but for tonight she’s all alone. Nobody to rush off to and meet. Nobody to celebrate with. Not that she feels much like celebrating anymore. Her shins ache and she just wants to crawl into bed.

When she emerges she nearly bumps into Andrew – whose impressive eyebrows are dropped down low as he sulks. Not a good skate then.

“Hey Andrew, everything alright?”

“Fucking twizzles.” He snaps, not really talking directly to her. “I messed up one of my fucking twizzles.”

He’s so tense. His jaw ticks and his eyebrows squished together. Shoulders hunched and hands balled into fists. He looks like a physical manifestation of how Tessa feels inside.

“We should have sex.” The words burst out of her, surprising them both, and Tessa finds that they sound a lot more confident than she expected. And, weirdly, she doesn’t regret saying them.

Andrew spins around to look at her like she’s lost her mind. “I’m sorry, did you just say-“

“We should have sex.” She repeats herself, resisting the urge to fold her arms across her chest. “It makes sense.”

“Um… how?”

“We both clearly need to blow of some steam. We’re friends, so it won’t be awkward after.” She starts listing off reasons as she makes them up on the spot, trying hard not to accidentally let out that one of them might be (is) because her partner, who she’s in love with, is currently having sex with someone else.

"Let me make sure I understand you.” Andrew says slowly, “You want us to be… friends with benefits?”

“Sure.” Tessa replies with a nonchalance she doesn’t feel. “I like you, I think you like me-“

“Of course I do.” Andrew chimes in, quick as ever to reassure her. “But what about Scott?”

“What about Scott? We’re not together, he has a girlfriend, and I want to be with you tonight. You make me feel… safe.” She admits, never the most comfortable with sharing her emotions but wanting to explain herself. He watches her for a long moment, and she can practically see the gears turning in his head. Weighing the pros and cons.

“Okay.” He finally says, and Tessa lets out a breath she didn’t know she was holding.

“Okay?”

“Yes. Your place or mine.” He gives her a smirk then, and Tessa knows that this is the right choice. She’s known Andrew for years. Lifetimes. And it doesn’t mean anything more to either of them than two friends doing each other a favor.

Once the decision’s been made Andrew is all in – taking her hand firmly in his and leading the way out of the rink. There’s a 24 hour corner store by the hotel and Andrew steps inside to pick up a box of condoms before they go back to the hotel and his room, which they’ve wordlessly decided is their destination.

He’s rooming with another Canadian named Michael, who he assures her will be out most of the night with his girlfriend. Tessa doesn’t argue. She’d much rather be here than trying to explain to Joannie Rochette why Pojé is in her bed. Especially since if they’re seen together word will definitely spread back to Scott. He’d probably go all _protective big brother_ on Andrew’s ass, she thinks, the word brother leaving a bitter taste in her mouth.

“How should we-“ Tessa begins to ask, the nervousness creeping back in, but Andrew’s closing the door behind them and then his mouth is there. Pressing against her lips too hard at first, and then backing off a little as they find the right angle together. He’s so tall that Tessa has to stand on her tiptoes _and_ crane her neck.

“This isn’t working.” Andrew murmurs against her lips before grabbing the back of her thighs with his hands and hoisting her up like she’s as light as a feather. She wraps her legs around his waist as they continue to kiss, and he walks her backwards until she’s being dropped carefully on top of the bed.

He pulls his shirt off before crawling over her, and Tessa takes a moment to appreciate all the muscles on display. He’s really grown up lately – hardly any trace of the gangly teenager he used to be.

“Hang on.” She says before he can lay over her completely, sitting up and discarding her own shirt. She hesitates for a moment on the clasp of her bra (she’s still not very busty, probably never will be), but the way his eyes skate along her collarbone and then down her chest as he licks his lips gives her the confidence boost she needs.

The bra comes off and she flings it in the direction of the floor as Andrew surges forward. His tongue entering her mouth to stroke hers as his hands skim up her ribcage, thumbs tracing the underside of her breasts before he cups them fully. His big hands cover them entirely and she whimpers into his mouth at the sensation.

He trails kisses down her chest, skipping her neck entirely (which she’s grateful for. She doesn’t want to be reminded of Scott right now), and takes one of her nipples into his mouth. His tongue stroking back and forth as he reaches up with his right hand to play with the other one. She cards her fingers through his hair, hips surging up to meet his, and this is already better than any sexual encounter she’s had before.

He takes her pants off slowly, placing gentle kisses along her waistline before sitting back so that he can pull them fully off of her.

She widens her legs so that he can slot in between them, and she can feel him hard and ready for her through the layers of their underwear. They grind against each other slowly while they kiss, and Tessa can’t help the way she clings to him – hands digging into his shoulders.

He moves his head down, taking a nipple into his mouth, as his fingers slip inside her underwear, and Tessa keens. He rubs circles around her clit for minute, testing out just what makes her cry out the loudest, before sliding a finger inside her – pumping in and out slowly a few times before adding a second finger. Stretching her out and getting her ready for him.

He sucks hard on her nipples just as he enters her with a third, and Tessa comes around his fingers – mouth dropping open in a silent O as her back arches off the bed and her hand tangles in his hair, the other one scratching red marks down his bicep.

He wastes no time then, shedding her of her underwear and throwing his boxers somewhere behind him and putting on a condom. Tessa’s not a virgin, but he’s only the second man she’s ever been with and it’s a little intimidating, how big he is, but he only gives her a second to look at him before he’s hovering back over her – kissing her deeply as he pushes in slowly.

It’s a tight fit at first, and he has to stop kissing her and drop his head to her shoulder for a minute to regain some control. When he’s finally sheathed inside her he gives Tessa some time to adjust, which she is grateful for, before pulling out a little bit and pushing back in.

He sets a slow pace until Tessa starts thrusting her hips up to meet his, and then picks up the speed. Reaching down between them again to rub at her clit.

“Come on, T.” He starts to say, but Tessa stops him in a hurry.

“Don’t. Not… not T.”

Understanding dawns in his eyes, and he amends himself with a smile, “Tess. I want you to come again.”

And she’s so grateful that it’s him. That he understands her and what she needs. They’ll never be anything more than friends, neither of them is looking for that in each other, but this – right here, right now – feels right.

 

“So… Scott, huh?” He says with a small smile – no trace of jealousy or judgment – when they’ve finished and are lying next to each other on the bed. Both of them still trying to catch their breath.

“So… Kaitlyn, huh?” She parrots back, intending to tease, but his eyes cloud over and his smile drops. “Oh.” Tessa whispers at the realization. She and Andrew have more in common than she’d thought.

“Yeah, Kaitlyn.” He finally says on a long sigh. Tessa reaches across the thin gap between them and takes his hand. A dance hold. A friends hold. Simple and easy.

"I’m sorry.” She says, and it’s enough. They understand each other. Paired so well in so many ways, but none of the ways that really matter.

“Me too.” He tugs her hand so that she has to move closer. Her head comes to rest on his chest and he kisses her forehead.

"Thank you.” She tells him. For so many things.

“Thank _you_.” He replies, understanding all of them.

 

           

The next day she sits on the bench next to Scott, lacing up their skates side by side like they always do. Her hair perfectly curled and pulled back with a quaint ribbon that matches her icy blue dress.

She feels lighter than she has in months. Like all of the emotions she’d been bottling up inside finally had somewhere to go. Somewhere they could be trusted to be kept safe.

When they take the ice together, it shows in her dancing. Beautiful, graceful, like she’s floating across the ice. _Umbrellas_ isn’t a perfect routine yet, but she knows it will be.

Scott smiles at her as the audience goes wild – a standing ovation – and Tessa grins back. They take their bows and head over to the kiss & cry with Marina to await their scores, and Tessa feels confident that they’ll be enough. They’re going to place first.

She blows a kiss towards the monitors, and Scott catches it through the screen like it was meant for him. It was. It’s always meant for him. Everything she has/is/does is for him.

But this time, it’s for Andrew too. 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Still with us? Feel free to yell at me as needed. ;)


	3. All that she wants, and all that she can't have

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The second chapter is brought to you by [Nats_North_by_North](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nats_North_by_North/pseuds/Nats_North_by_North) and the TMEL girls who helped me make this possible. (Without them you'd be waiting until march so,,, go say thank you to them hihi)

They’ve broken every rule of the sport by fashioning Bizet’s Carmen into someone she’s never been before. It’s a lot of skin, Spanish ruffles, leather and fishnet tights for a nineteenth-century piece of music, and though a seismic, character-driven shift of that sort is not unheard of in ice dancing, their odds are oddly stacked. Partly because Carmen is, for lack of a better word, overdone; partly because they’ve modernized it to the point of no return.

The routine itself is an amalgamation of unorthodox lifts that have made both Tessa and Kate Virtue turn pink in the face, debauched, romantical midline step sequences, and Scott Moir, whether he knows what he is doing or not, pushing her up against the boundaries they had once set, and crossed all over again when Bizet’s epithalamium had entered their lives.

In the early stages of the programme’s conception, before the familiar grip of routine had settled upon their shoulders like a rain cloud over Nova Scotia, Scott called it “risky business” to warp a judge’s favourite untimely tragedy into a honeypot hit. She had been inclined to agree, _despite_ Marina’s incessant reassurance.

There was simply something about the major scale changes being implemented that put the fear of god in Tessa’s gut; she had spent many a night draped over Scott’s lap (whose stomach still harboured all of her fragile faith), worried they wouldn’t be able to sell it to the ISU.

No — worried that _she_ wouldn’t be able to.

Young love on the war-torn sandbanks of Normandy, the tango Madonna in her lover’s wanting arms— a sliver of a girl on the brink of womanhood, pressed into her betrothed’s chest in the wayside of a starlit field outside Bohemia. These were all figures she knew like her own mind, characters she slipped into like a second skin with the age-old ease of a seasoned skater, far beyond her years. They came to her like Voltaire in the dead of night, like first position and pliés, like the taste of victory on Scott’s tongue and like equally forbidden, no-good chocolate.

She knew the young lover so intimately, so _divinely,_ that imagining herself as anyone else in Scott’s arms was impossible.

It had never occurred to her that there would come a day where she would have to leave the comfort of those girls behind; girls who, with their Bambi eyes and beating hearts, had always fallen in love with their constant Ilderton-born, ice-rink-raised counterpart, wickedly and completely, programme after programme, year after year.

_This time it will be different_ , Marina said. _This time you will be the devil in disguise._

-

Playing Don Jose’s master seductress opposite the man who is so very good at romancing women is not only intimidating, but also frustrating. The anger, the bravado, that chest-high pride that fills entire arenas – it comes so easily to Scott. He slicks his hair back with one swift move and becomes the man incarnate; he shouts, he growls, he throws her into the air and his face into her neck like she’s a confessional, a home for all his sins and sorrows on the downward spiral towards purgatory. He becomes the man in question like he has always been him, and Tessa just… falls to pieces.

When she places her palm to his chest and feels his heart beating steadily through the thick fleece material, from exertion or otherwise, and hers is awfully quiet, she worries.

When he hums the habanera in his apartment shower while she searches for costume inspiration and all that rings in her ears is fear, she worries.

And when he goes home at night, soiled with his and her sweat from a day well-spent on the ice, to a girl that looks a little too much like her, she calls Andrew. She calls him, and he answers. She calls him and it’s easier than with Scott, because she doesn’t have to hide her strangled sobs over the cacophonous noise of the car radio. She calls him, and there’s a man on the other line who understands.

He too has his own habanera girl to deal with; a sort of mirror figure that just can’t get it right either, and it is a godsend if she’s ever been given one, that they fall together as easily as only once-jaded lovers could — too similar, and then not entirely enough, to fit together in the symbiotic way Tessa is so divinely accustomed to.

He’s at the helm of misery when she isn’t, and vice versa: he sings the same war songs, speaks the same tribunal philosophy of things that can and cannot be had (even though he too has yearned and yearned for them throughout the years).

Andrew is both comfort in the absence of Scott’s warmth – an _in-the-backseat-of-his-car-type-of-hook-up_ reminder of just how cold it can get – and a pilgrimage into newfound friendship. One which coexists outside of the stress and tenure of a lifetime of memories, one without predestined hamartias and the dull, aching complexity of their want for one another creating trouble wherever she and Scott go (and they have gone to far too many places with each other over the years).

Funnily enough, wanting is a thing she doesn’t have to do much with Andrew. He’s like all men and women when it comes to sex: simple.

She’s told Jordan over the phone that he gives twice as good as he gets whenever she will have him, and that had been no lie, although her sister had forcibly strong-armed her into giving out details about the situation... There’s just something about that love-starved man, sycamore maple, mint and fougère top notes included, that makes it convenient to simply forget about why this is all a terrible, terrible, no-good idea.

(They’ve come a long way from their early Canton days; from awkward kisses in hotel rooms and first times, sexual and otherwise…)

But above it all (the-will-Scott-or-will-he-not-situation, tall, taller, Andrew and other twenty-something year old disasters), she’s picked a tough sport to love.

 

Tough because it doesn’t love her back and one-sided affairs are always drab (her legs, the sexism, the unattainable silky-slim figures and beauty standards she’s put herself under the knife for). Tough because Scott doesn’t love her, not in the way she wants him to anyway, and tough, well... because your chances of making it big are next to fucking nothing.

Sure, Tessa’s challenged that notion tenfold with Scott. But he’s not here right now, is he? He’s not here to pick up her doubtful pieces the way he always used to post-performance (in hotel rooms across the globe, on airplanes with her cheek pressed against his chest— on buses, in cars, even behind the goddamn hood of a broken-down Zamboni with his hand cradling hers protectively, for god’s sake...) He’s not here to lick her wounds and ease her mind about the Carmen situation, not here to put his wandering hands to good use because they’re always wandering. Up and down, along every nook and curve and cranny, along the wayward journey of her body, like it belongs to him. He’s voyaged so far south in his time – between the Waipio-like valley of her breasts, and even further, beyond the silver buoy of her belly button ring – that she cannot begin to recite all of the cavernous places Scott has truly docked at… She would hate him and his smug grin for it, if the notion of belonging to him weren’t so unmistakably true.

Nowadays her body aches from pain as much as it aches for his hands to settle at her hips, low and far south and lower than anyone has ever touched her. It aches for the sound of his laughter reverberating around the rink on an early Tuesday morning that she can’t imagine Cassandra manages to replicate over pillow talk; it aches for the insatiable, the sudden, the not-milk-and-water stare he gives her before he leans down to kiss her dizzy during a rare outburst of affection.

But Scott’s not here and Tessa still aches, from pain and otherwise.

She had once said to Andrew that there were things our souls wanted, and then there were things we could actually have; so, so what if he’s a good head taller? So what if he’s not what-is-mine-is-yours, her first dalliance with romance, the boy from Ilderton? So fucking what.

Andrew likes her boob-to-ass ratio just the same, he hungers for her when she lets him in, and he’s actually here, all hands on deck. He’s present— and to forfeit the good chance of only licking the lips of a stale water bottle instead of Andrew’s until the Olympic pinnacle in Sochi, is a godsend she would never rebuff, not for all the morals and justice of the world.

So that’s why she calls him (again) late one September night, in search of some type of archaic sexual approval that she is, in fact, Carmen, that she can be the devil as well as the Madonna, the lover, the leaver (and all the things in between). She’s so hungry for it, after all that Scott’s done to her at practice (winding her up, teasing her, playing her for ball and chain without ever giving her what she wants); she forgets to apply perfume after stepping into a thin pair of balmy fishnet stockings over the skimpiest little Agent Provocateur lingerie set she owns.

She forgets perfume. When, in her entire 24 years of living, has she ever done that before?

Before picking up her phone she runs her hands down the sides of her stockings, along her hips, her narrow spindle waist in slow, calming motions. She’s so fucking nervous. She’s always nervous before she calls him, even though logic would dictate otherwise. They’ve done this plenty of times… Giving Andrew a booty call is far from foreign territory to her. In the mirror she watches as her hands shake, fingering at the lacy hemline of her black bra and her barely-there panties; what is there to lose?

So, she dials his number - ten unwavering digits and a boatload of nerve - right then and there (before she can change her mind, and herself back into sweats and a top bun that will only land her on her own couch, and not under him - the preferred outcome).

He picks up after two beats and breathes such an easy “Hi” into her ear, which is pressed against the glass of her phone, that she almost abandons her plan immediately. She’s done this a thousand times, but it never does get any easier.

“Hey… Andrew, are you, uh, busy right now?” As she speaks, stammering through the haze of her young adult naiveté, she can hear him laugh.

“No, I’m not busy, Tess. Not if you don’t want me to be,” he says.

There’s another set of sounds coming from behind him – his friends, she determines, after a listen – and now the ball is in her court again. Andrew shouts something undistinguishable to his group of friends, then laughs loudly, which incidentally gives her enough time to formulate an answer. Tessa pulls her beige trench-coat around her middle, cinching her waist with the belt until her breath eases and she finally gives way to her initial determination. “Well, if you’re not busy, then I was wondering if you could maybe help me with something? I— ah, it’s stupid… but I need to know if you think I’ve got this,” she says.

“Spit it out, Tess. What is it?” He sounds endlessly curious through the phone, and she can just about picture that snarky schoolboy smile of his dancing on those sweet, able lips.

“I need help with Carmen.”

“Oh?” He’s laughing again, this time without the sound of friends in the background, as he seems to have stepped out onto his porch.

 

“If this is an ice thing… shouldn’t you be calling Scott instead?” He asks.

“No, no! It’s not… it’s not an ice thing. I just need to know if I’m getting my character right… and you’ve always been good at creating all these backstories for yours, and I just thought—”

“So, it’s a literature thing…?”

She barks a shrill, nervous laugh into the small space of her car, nodding even though he can’t see her. “Yeah, something like that.”

“Good, because I don’t think I would have been welcome to skate Carmen with you at Arctic Edge. I’m sure Scott would have a thing or two to say about that, eh?” He inhales for a beat before continuing. “When do you want me to be there?”

“I’m not in Canton, actually. I’ve been running errands all day anyway and thought I could maybe just… come by?”

 

It’s odd – the way she has to think about being every Canadian schoolgirl’s Olympic pride and joy while she’s dressed in all but bits of silk and lace, and what they would think of her if they knew what she was about to do.

Perfect Tessa, gold-medal poster child and hope of a nation, on her way to fuck her fears away. It’s stupid, actually, it’s so fucking fucked-up that she can’t even think about Scott ever finding out.

Thankfully, before her mind spirals into the intricacies and meaning of this ridiculous moment, Andrew pipes up again.

“Sure, that works for me. Just give me half an hour, yeah? I need to get rid of my buddies first.”

“Great!” she chimes. “I’ll be there in half an hour then, give or take five minutes.”

After that, Andrew hangs up in a slew of dinky “see you laters” and “byes” that she reciprocates just as warmly, leaving her feeling decidedly romanced, and even a little bit amused.

But when she parks outside his front door exactly twenty-seven minutes later, switching out her ballet flats for the red-back pumps Jordan had made her buy in Paris last summer, she feels every bit the liar and pretender Tessa thinks she is on ice with Scott’s exemplary Don Jose.

Gone is the amusement, the pink-labelled romance, and all her base, depraved, and carnal Carmen-esque conviction.

The drive over from Canton had robbed her clean of that which had originally prompted her to wear all but nothing under that trench coat in the first place, and she shakes like the poplars in her mother’s back garden under duress of Ontario’s whistling winter winds while cracking open her car door.

In a split decision which mirrors the motion of setting that first blade on the ice before a big competition, she’s up and out of her car and knocking at Andrew’s door, with the cacophonous sound of her heels clacking against the pavement and the welcome first notes of Bizet’s opera suite number one still roaring (like one certain Don Jose…) in her ears.

Tessa sees her reflection staring back at her in the small window cut-out in Andrew’s front door; most noticeably, the red lips and black eyeliner she’d meticulously applied, as if getting ready for the performance of a lifetime. She licks over the sweet, red layer once, twice, before swallowing thickly.

Then she can hear Andrew approach, taking big, slow steps towards the oak door. And when he opens, all smiles and kind, well-meant mischief, she’s surprised at how she doesn’t even shiver.

“Hey stranger,” she says with her hands at her hips, finding it within herself to give him a coy little smile.

He, of course, grins and envelops her in a big, whole-body hug— positively dwarfing Tessa as he rests his chin atop her head. “It’s been a minute, eh?”

At that, she giggles into the fabric of his Team Canada hoodie, feeling warm and sheltered from the autumn winds beyond the threshold of his door that she is currently still caught in. It has been a minute. A month even, if she’s counted right (which she has). A month too long for her liking…

He’s still all smiles when he invites her inside, with no forethought given to what she is about to do.

“How was the drive up? It’s been raining a lot these last days. I hope the roads weren’t too slippery?” He turns his back to her, reaching for a hanger before asking another question. “Can I get that coat for you?”

She balls her hands into tight fists, gearing up to answer him. This is it. This is it, goddamn. There’s no turning back now…

“Sure. Let me just undo my buttons…” She says, making sure to enunciate every syllable and vocal stress in those seven words.

Tessa can feel the world slow down while she pops each button like a champagne bottle. She’s about halfway done by the time Andrew turns around again to face her, looking at her, and then looking again once he notices her almost bare skin peeking out from underneath her trench coat.

“Holy shit, Tessa,” he breathes, aimlessly letting his eyes wander the length of her exposed thighs and body as she undoes the last button and definitively drops her coat to the floor with a loud thud, once and for all ridding herself of the young lover’s overcoat.

“Jesus fuck, Tess. When you said you wanted to work on Carmen… you really meant that, huh?”

She smiles a little, content with his reaction. And even though he hasn’t moved an inch, hasn’t as much as tried to reach for her within the last thirty seconds, she can tell he’s anything but opposed.

It’s all the Dutch courage she needs to meet him halfway.

“You still want to get that coat for me, Andrew?”

“No.” He says finally, after what seems like an eternity of waiting. Some colour has returned to his face. It’s a deep, burgundy blush, racing from his cheeks to the very bridge and tip of his nose. He inhales once, twice.

“No, I think I’d much rather get you.” And then he’s walking, three sure steps right towards her body, looking at her so hungrily, so starved, she almost breaks out in goosebumps.

Tessa falls easily into his arms, the way Carmen falls into Don Jose’s; with a soul afire and positively bewitched, every shade of jealous and like she’s got everything to prove. She shoves her shaking fingers into his belt loops, tugging him flush against her body before she loses her nerve. It’s been a month. She’s out of breath from just looking at his lips.

But ever trusty Andrew catches her mid-step and stops her angry hero’s prowl with the breadth of his chest against hers and proverbially takes his hands off the shelf to whisper promises of redecorating her whole body with fingerprints and bruises, blue and pink and purple, the sum of sex and want incarnate, right into the shell of her ear. She shivers then, under his roaming gaze like she should have shivered outside, waiting, aching, yearning for his hands to do just what he had boldly promised to her.

Tessa wants and wants and wants, and Andrew will let her have all of him. He’ll let her have it all with no strings attached.

She’s normally unceremonious with herself, impatient, as free of facet as a newly sharpened pair of skates on sheet of ice, but Andrew, oh, Andrew takes her to church in the time it takes him to get them from the hallway to the kitchen counter.

He’s kissing her, carefully at first and then not so carefully after she starts to climb him in a desperate manner. Her hands are everywhere; in his hair, at his flushed chest peeking out from under his team Canada sweater, which she hikes up in a hurry after Andrew’s secured her frame around him with a hand on her bare ass. His lips on her neck make Tessa feel like liquid gold, and she would have felt the earth stutter on its axis, if he hadn’t crowded her against the cool top of his marble counter and shaken her from her trance with the drastic change in temperature.

He sets her down unceremoniously, almost impatiently, catching his fingers under the cold surface and her ass cheeks. The duality of cold and warmth makes a shiver run up the entire length of her spine, out-racing the hand that has begun to trace it, from the bottom up.

“Fuck, I don’t remember it being that cold,” she whispers hoarsely, keening back into him for warmth. Andrew laughs against her collarbone, only pushing his left thigh between her dangling legs, opening them up in same vein as giving her warmth.

“That’s because the last time I fucked you on top of here, it was summer,” he says flatly, busying his shaking hands by snagging his fingers under the tight elastic of her thigh highs.

Summer… Summer, Tessa remembers. That hickey he left on the inside of her thigh had lasted for weeks. Not even her trusty, heavy-duty concealer had managed to cover up that bad boy, and she’s almost certain she’s never seen Scott’s face go quite as red as when he thought he’d put that bruise there with his own two hands.

He could have. They both know it. He could have, but he didn’t.

It is why Tessa revels in the type of uncomplicated satisfaction Andrew gives her in the comfort of his own home. The type of satisfaction she sure as hell always tried for with Scott and never received. When Andrew kisses her, mouth open and in the middle of his kitchen, hands framing her face and neck like a Botticelli picture, it’s just that. And when he pushes her against the sheets a little later, having discarded her shoes somewhere outside his bedroom, it’s just sex.

It’s just sex when her breasts – creamy, humble things – feel like mountains beneath the caress of his thumb and she spends half a second wondering why she ever feared that he didn’t like them. He does, God, he loves them with his hands and mouth. It’s just sex when she almost catches her nail on his belt as he helps her tug it free from his jeans, and it’s just sex when he tells her to leave her panties on so he can take a mental picture of her ass pressed against the bulge in his boxers.

Andrew takes his time with her, even though she’s the one calling the shots (she always calls the shots). He lies between her sweet thighs for as long as it takes. Until she bursts like blackcurrants between a pair of lips, sour and sweet and tart all over his sticky mouth.

And then when they’re done with each other, when she’s well-spent and slick with sweat under him, with Andrew’s hands still tethering on her thighs that quiver in aftershocks of his making, Tessa pulls him in for one last, searing kiss before they go back to being _just friends_ on the sofa of his couch, watching reruns of shows they don’t care about until she falls asleep on his lap.

 

On most days she handles this switch well, but tonight it feels like she just told him to rip her ribcage open, pull her heart right out of her chest and drop it into the rose-gold colander (a gift from Kaitlyn, and a reminder that it’s not just her who’s here to escape)  on the kitchen counter, as if it were a piece of fruit he’d like to sink his teeth into later. She feels so full and empty at the same time, Tessa barely registers how Andrew moves to shift his arm around her waistline and pull her in, until his chin comes to rest atop her head.

 

He makes no move to let go of her, so she lets herself reach for his hand and for one, perfect moment, imagines what her life would be like if she never let go...

 

He is so at ease here, with his arm wrapped snugly around her waist. She wishes more than anything, when he tugs her in closer, that this could just mean something more. That it could mean more if she weren’t...so if he weren’t....so but they both are, _both_ of them, into the very seam of their beings, someone else’s entirely.

The notion is so sickening, she has to screw her eyes shut to stop the tears from flowing. In a shoddy attempt to save face, she pretends to fall asleep by controlling her breathing, but Andrew picks up on the trick and places a finger under her chin, forcing her to look at him.

 

She fights him for a little while, that stubborn, too-smart-for-his-own good man until a great big yawn tears through her frame and she twists her body enough to face him. With their noses touching, even Tessa finds it hard to stay cool.

 

“You do know you can talk to me, right?” He says. She watches his lips move, pouting a little in response.

 

“Come on, Tessa… Cut me some slack here.”

 

Tessa sighs against his chest like a petulant child. She’s not quite ready to face him after the dilemmas swamping her mind, not quite ready to let go of his hand either, or to put on the old, weathered Stars On Ice t-shirt she likes to steal from him whenever she stays over.

 

“This was just fun, right? No… no strings attached.” She finally settles on saying something that will ease her conscience and put some distance between the two of them. It’s cowardly, and Andrew mentions as much when he brushes his thumb against her swollen, lower lip before catching it between his teeth again and again, until she forgets about logic and reason.

Later, after they wash the sin from their bodies with more sin and lavender soap in his walk-in shower, and she is comfortably snuggled into shoulder on sofa downstairs, it occurs to her why she almost cracked.

 

It was never just sex with Scott. It was never just a release, never just a lapse in judgement.

 

But this thing with Andrew? Well, god damn it, it feels easy. It feels fucking good. It finally feels right.

This doesn’t have to be a lifetime of baggage and her whole world in the balance, and for once, it’s enough.

-

Before the high performance camp jitters in August, Tessa remembers, vividly, the way Scott had laughed into her clavicle when she told him, “I may be many things, but a seductress is not one of them.” She remembers how he had laughed and laughed and continued to laugh, brushing his amused lips across the shell of her ear every now and again, to the one, sweet pulse point where neck slopes into shoulder, her ripe, unscarred jugular and the depression in her chin, before profusely disagreeing like it was the most ludicrous statement he had ever heard her utter.

“You’ve seduced me a thousand times, T.” His tone was soft, almost too kind for the way his hands enwreathed her face. “The first time you seduced me was when I had just turned seventeen, do you remember that?” _Do you, T? Do you?_ “And all the times thereafter, Tessa, huh, what about them? And all the times you’d let me want you without having you?”

“N-No,” she’d replied dumbly, confused and frightened by his sudden honesty. He was never honest about things like this, not when it was about them, not when it was about him and her. She didn’t want it to be true. Any of it. Not even the after-tremors that came whenever she felt unsure as Carmen on ice; not even the sudden, stark look he’d shoot her that would send shivers jogging up her spine for days to come.

 

He had kissed her eyelids then, over and over, until she screwed them shut and fell asleep in the ubiquity of his warmth. She was a seductress, oh, he had said as much. And according to Andrew, a damn good one too.

She remembers one Tuesday when he’d just about caught her in front of the doors of the women’s changing room, dropping a well-intended kiss to her forehead while whispering a slew of secrets he had failed to mention the other night. “All the times you didn’t know about, and all the times you thought you didn’t? You did, Tessa. You did.” And then he’d just…left, with a funny look on his face. Left her standing there like an idiot with her skate guards in hand, feeling somewhere caught in between the seductress he had made her out to be and the woman she thought she was.

-

So, regardless of her initial worries, they pull it off.

They’ve been pulling it off for a while now, the way they always do once they put their mind to it; impressing their coaches and scandalizing Suzanne, who had on a whim decided to come and watch their High Performance Camp run-through in late August.

Admittedly, from an outsider’s perspective (Suzanne’s), it’s little crude. She’ll give them that. But so is love, if she’s being completely honest. It’s crude and rough and lonely, and it sometimes looks the way Carmen looks at Don Jose, or Scott at Tessa, when he’s feeling particularly cruel.

By the time their least favourite medalling competition rolls around in its usual, unpredictable fashion, they’ve dominated Skate Canada and won Rostelecom by miles. It gives them the edge over Anna and Luca, and perhaps even Meryl and Charlie, which, at a Grand Prix Final, they’ve never had before. They’ve never won it, and though their season’s track record has been overwhelmingly positive, they don’t necessarily expect to win it this time around, contrary to their usual competitive nature.

There’s something about the Grand Prix Final that always tastes like silver to them. She doesn’t know what tips her off again the day before the competition, but the familiar feeling settles and pools hot and low in her stomach, and no matter how she retches into the expensive marble bathtub of her hotel that morning, it just won’t dislodge.

-

They schedule a last-minute run through of the free dance the morning before the competition, and they’ve been at it for an hour. Unsuccessfully, granted, but at it all the same. It feels an awful lot like wasted time, now that the ever-irksome presence of Meryl and Charlie had waned, them having both long since left the rink in favour of dry practice and mental prep. What remains of the enigmatic Americans is the stench of impending success that Tessa and Scott never seem to be able to latch onto at the Final, and she can see that very realization seeping into Scott with every misguided lift and shape and twizzle he makes.

But right now, she simply wants to kill Bizet and his terrible, gaudy Habanera. She wants to murder Scott for the love he gives and the hands he never puts where they need to be, wants to at least thump Marina over the head with a slugger, and then dig herself a hole in the ground and never, ever resurface. She’s had enough of Scott’s heat and Marina’s ever-chilling deluge of hostility when faced with imperfect skating. She’s had enough of the way it eats at her.

Tessa’s lost an inch off her waist since last season – as though two of her ribs had simply wandered off. And though she’d lost and gained and lost and lost and lost… over the years, this worries her more than any other time before. More than how Mathieu’s predecessor had to readjust her sliver of a dress for Mahler, or when she’d grown into her golden tassel dress too snugly after a month of extra training…

Perhaps Scott had taken her ribs with him when he left (her) for Cassandra, blood on his hands that clasped the brittle bones, and a schoolboy’s jump in his step. She doesn’t understand why he had to take them too, when he already has so much of her. She’s certain he must keep it all in a chest of drawers, reserved only for the bits of Tessa Virtue she has never been able to hold on to, not when faced with the gale-force winds of his personality. As chances go, Tessa reflects, she never really stood one against Scott, did she?

(Andrew had mentioned it the last time she’d been under his callous palm, while he picked his way along the sides of her body with those fingers of his until she had gleamed with sweat and the strain of refusing to shiver under his delicate reverie. He’d suddenly stopped touching her when his hands reached her waist, a hot breath climbing down the long, sharp line of her neck. “Tess…you’re tiny.”

She never ended up answering him, only the lips that had delivered the statement, thus ending his lover’s inquisition with the taste of bourbon on her tongue and his hands on the swell of her ass.

She wasn’t proud of how she’d shut Andrew out. He’d been a tremendous friend to her over the years: never asking much, never overstepping. He never bartered for answers, which is precisely why she should have given him one. That, and some peace of mind.

They were friends, first and foremost. And she had worried him.)

“Carmen is a devil, Tessa!” Marina shouts from across the rink, unsure as to why her usually so astute students are failing to capitalize on their glaring chemistry. They seem deflated, standing there in each other’s arms.

“A… A she-devil! A murderess, a seductress. Not…” Marina pauses, throwing her hands in the air, “... whatever this is.” Their coach’s eyes are wild with dissatisfaction; her hands now gesticulating like she’s trying to strangle a Tessa-and-Scott shaped ghost. “I don’t want you wasting ice time. Get out, get off the ice, and get it right… before competition starts.”

“Marina, I’m sure Tessa and I just-“ Scott attempts, foolishly thinking his charm will get him anywhere with Marina. _Silly boy_ , she thinks. _Silly boy; she will never listen to you. Not when she has_ them.

“Go. Both of you. I have no time for emotionless mess.” She tuts -- actually tuts -- and stops their music, leaving Tessa and Scott on the rink in silence.

It’s not as if their second place was already a given at this stage, no. But the stakes were high and their war horse winded, having lost its breath somewhere in the mid-line step sequence, or in their unusually sloppy execution of elements that would nary cause them a sweat if this were any other event, if this were any other role…

But it was just the two of them circling the ice now, loitering on the blades of their skates like a mismatched pair of socks, fitting but not quite fitting, trying and failing at emulating the conviction with which Meryl and Charlie had hounded the ice an hour before. He’s got that funny look on his face again, that wayward stare, as if he were trying to compute a grand revelation.

Tessa never does find out what Scott was thinking in that morning, or how much he thought he knew but didn’t actually know, not until much, much later…

-

It is the ever nauseating morning of the Grand Prix Final; an event which comes and goes as fast as Scott’s girlfriends in his teenage years, and she is wound up tight.

They’ve always had explosive on-ice chemistry. It’s something that’s as much part of their genetic makeup as her green eyes and his pointed nose. He was always coming too close to her, invading her space, parading his fingers around the delicate flesh of the insides of her thighs and that dip in her shoulder – and then in turn, when he finally has her shivering with want right down from the thin, black leotard covering the swell of her breast to the pulsing ache in between her hip bones (which he put there in the first place), not close enough.

Scott would play her for ball and chain every day if he could, as if winding her up for the hell of it was his favourite on-ice pastime, and not the torturous act it felt like. She wishes, caught between his shoulder and the mass of his arm that’s curled around her hoisted waist, that he’d find someone else’s buttons to push.

Tessa winds up a tangle of raw nerves after he’s finished with her, every damn time. Not as much after Vancouver, but every time since then, when she’d finally forgiven him for the mess he’d made of them during her first surgery.

It doesn’t matter that he isn’t even particularly trying harder than usual. Looking at her like she is the last temptation of Christ and playing her by every weakness he’s already been privy to suffices. He needn’t even touch her for it. Tessa falls to pieces when she’s with him, buckling like a foal under the weight of everything they are and the absence of everything they’re not.

The lilt of his lily-soft lips before the music starts that gradually pulls the corners of his mouth up and up, like an upturned sunset on the horizon of his cheeks, was oftentimes worse than when she would guide his hand to the inside of her thigh as Carmen. He would spring his laughter on her before the rise of another pale Michigan moon at the end of the day, and she’d be done for. Just like when he’d offer her one of his rink-side smiles. Just like… when he used to kiss her neck beneath the wash of noise from the changing room shower while they were still young and fucking, young and winning, young and in love with parts and pieces of each other that had matured ahead of time while the rest of their bodies and minds still played desperate catch up.

 

He’s always been good at learning her sighs and sorrows, no matter how badly she tried to keep them from his curious mind. He would tap at all the places she felt inelegant, brash, and not thin enough with his forefingers, drumming and drumming on her bones and the bends of her hips and lips and thighs, drawing her fears out into the open until she no longer knew where to find them.

The ones she keeps hidden within her, thoughts and traumas that have long since neatly tucked themselves beneath her protruding breast bone, or the festering violence of words setting up camp and finding refuge in her welcoming amygdala, obscured from his sight, were harder to fight; but he tried nonetheless. Scott was a speakeasy if she’d ever seen one; and that boy had spoken ease into her plenty.

Why she thinks this damned morning will be any different, Tessa doesn’t know.

 

They don’t mean for it to happen. They don’t ever mean for it, but then he catches her eye from across the hallway before the curtain call, looking a lot like James Dean and as if he wants her half as badly as she always wants him, and the rest is history. The car crashes, her resolve crumbles, and she’ll end up backed against the wall of her dressing room, one hand held to her heart and knocking knees like she’s eighteen and aching for love all over again.

He doesn’t knock on her dressing room door like he might have done three years ago, before they fell into place in spaces that never did quite fit each other. Scott waltzes in like he owns the very ground they walk on, opening his mouth to say something or another, but closing it when he catches Tessa’s image in the mirror.

She whips her head around, this morning’s makeshift chignon still in place even though it shouldn’t be, and just stares. The quiet is almost unbearable beneath his heavy, charcoal gaze. She watches as he looks her up and down, engulfing every slip and sliver of her skin like he’d doused it in petroleum himself.

She just about catches the way his lips part as the last of his breath leaves him when she undoes her hair, crushing the pins that had previously upheld the waves of black and satin to the table beneath her fingertips. She’s not even within an inch of herself while she shakes the tangled mess of hair free from its previous position atop her head.

Scott sees it. Of course he sees it. He sees everything… Everything he wants to and everything she just about lets him see.

Tessa meets his eyes with a steely gaze of her own, something flickering there behind her irises that would strike him like the manna from heaven if she had paid mind to it. She recalls one late November — a tryst they’d not wanted but had succumbed to anyway. The way she dares to look at him now holds a stark resemblance to that night, and the urgency with which they will perform this warhorse, unpolished and imperfect to a fault, rises in her chest like the tide on the supple sea.

She doesn’t feel like herself when she reaches out for him, crashing her lips to his, and the man kissing her back is certainly not Scott. At least not the Scott he was this morning at breakfast, where he’d fed her a slice of apple under Patrick’s scandalized, chastising stare.

The heat rising in her cheeks while he catches her upper lip between his teeth does not faze her. Her heart has finally stopped lurching whenever he comes too close; what she feels now is purely physical, entirely primal.

Love had left them at the Canadian-American border that September. She just wants to paint her pale, pale body with his and win; she wants to have it all.

 

And so, she lets him. Lets him have it all (just like she let Andrew).

Once he’s made sure to bruise her lip, Scott shifts his whole upper body forward, cloaking her mouth with the broad expanse of his chest and her bare shoulder with his one free hand, while the other one hopelessly tangles somewhere in her open hair.

“We’re going to win this, T.”

And amidst the mess of training gear and hockey sticks, loose pucks, blades and skating paraphernalia, pressed flush against the warmth of his unwavering frame, she believes him.

She believes him.

She believes him when she doesn’t even have to wonder why he stays quiet when after locking the door to her changing room, his hands wander south of her belly button and under the ruffles of her costume, making her breath come quick and hitched and hurried like she’s already skated the short, free, and exhibition dances in consecutive order.

All their most important moments thus far have happened in complete silence; Mahler’s Fifth in Vancouver (lying in his arms as they feigned to see the stars in the sky), the ephemeral hug, waking up to his worried eyes after her second surgery in the Fall of 2010 and every single goddamn kiss goodnight he’d ever given her. He’d paint her cheek with his lips without so much as dropping a syllable, burning prints into her skin like a wildfire in the coniferous boreal forest. He seems to remember just the same, judging by the way he merely keens a little into the carved-out slope of her neck, a place where, if one were to imagine the continental plates before the drift, his face would fit her neck just like South America unto the bosom of Africa.

Tessa feels her cheeks burning again, Scott’s longing eyes a mess of vivid, molten hazel that trace the column of her spine until she is aflame with goose bumps, flush and pliant in his arms. He doesn’t seem to be of the mind to look away while he works his fingers under her fishnet tights.

“We’re going to win this time.”

 

Tessa’s blood feels like gunpowder in her veins, sharp and ready to ignite at any moment—at any contact. She’d believe anything that comes from his mouth in this state. But he remains unhurried in his ministrations, exacting his motions precisely and with the intent to leave her wanting like Don Jose wanted the open thighs of Carmen; she is sure of it. After everything that had happened between then, childhood tantrums to teenage fall-outs in the back of his mother’s truck included, it has always been her prerogative to know what it meant when he spread her out with his fingers. Just. Like. That.

  


When he is done, Scott wheezes a dark laugh into her clavicle. Her hair is a mess his hands have made, but she doesn’t mind. Chignons can be remade, hair re-sprayed with lacquer.

They both fall silent for a short, odd moment, wherein Tessa settles into the comfort of what had just happened. There were no superlatives big or bodacious enough to describe the liberation of what it felt like for Scott to soothe the ache she had carried – the years old ache that he had caused. She believes him, and she loves him, and she forgives him.

So, they show up despite Tessa’s bad feeling, despite the changing room incident, despite her sticky, quivering thighs: out for blood and precious metal like it’s Vancouver 2010 all over again. They show up for the free dance with fight in their veins even when she can tell the judges will cut them to shreds for the role reversal, and the murder they’ve committed by dancing to Bizet and making it a jealous man’s tragedy instead.

 

 

There is a final on this day, and another one and then another. Victory would surely come.

She believes him so much, it doesn’t even occur to her that it might not.

They don’t.

  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi again *waves sheepishly*
> 
> So this took a while. In my defense; I have no defense. 
> 
> Feel free to yell at me in the comments though!!!

**Author's Note:**

> We hope you liked this! Feel free to yell at us in the comments!!


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